Overview

The compelling companion title to the much-lauded Just One Day follows Willem's transformative journey toward self-discovery and true love, by the author of If I Stay.

Picking up where Just One Day ended, Just One Year tells Willem's side of the story. After spending an amazing day and night with Allyson in Paris that ends in separation, Willem and Allyson are both searching for one another. His story of their year of quiet longing and near misses is a perfect counterpoint to Allyson’s own as Willem undergoes a transformative journey, questioning his path, finding love, and ultimately, redefining himself.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/19/2013Those who have read Forman’s Just One Day (published earlier this year) already know what happened to Allyson, the foreign exchange student whose whirlwind romance with a Dutch actor, Willem, was cut short. In this companion novel, Forman shares Willem’s captivating side of the story as he embarks on a global quest to find his lost love. Besides discovering how and why Willem left Allyson stranded in Paris, readers will learn what makes him tick, as Willem’s passions and troubled history come to light. Although Willem has plenty of money, there are things he can’t buy, like affection from his emotionally distant mother or a sense of rootedness he hasn’t felt since his father’s death. It also can’t buy the commitment Willem will need to become a serious actor. Old acquaintances and new friends guide Willem on a path spanning three continents, helping him realize the possibilities that lie before him. The complexity of Willem’s character, the twisting plot, and far-flung settings (including the Netherlands, Mexico, and India) create an alluring story that pushes beyond the realm of star-crossed romance. Ages 14–up. Agent: Sarah Burnes, the Gernert Company. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

Accolades for Just One Year:

- New York Times Bestseller- A Kids' Indie Next List Winter '13/'14 pick

Willem wakes in a Paris hospital with injuries and a concussion. He spent the previous day with a young woman, Lulu, having quite the one-day romance, but that evening they were attacked by skinheads. When he finally remembers enough to look for Lulu, she is gone. Willem spends the next year vagabonding all over the world, living in hostels or on couches, never owning more than he can carry in a small backpack. His father has died, and his mother has moved to India, and he is just living day to day. Lulu is never far from his mind all this time; the connection they forged being very deep. Forman effortlessly conjures up the headspace of a twenty-something young man who is good at his core, but frightened of settling down. She gives Willem some solid friends to count on, and they help ground him. In some ways, the book is as light as air, as light as Willem wants to be, traveling without a destination in mind. In others, it is as heavy and deep as the sorrow that pecks at Willem when he remembers his father. Readers unfamiliar with Just One Day (Dutton, 2013), this novel's companion piece, may feel a bit at sea at first, but after only a few chapters, things fall into place, and readers have a very good sense of Willem and how he feels about Lulu, and that one day. It is lovely traveling the world with Willem and watching as he discovers the best in himself. Reviewer: Geri Diorio

VOYA - Holly Storm

Just One Year is equally good as a standalone read or as a sequel. Forman drops tantalizing hints that relate to Lulu's story without making any aspect seem forced, which will thrill those familiar with Just One Day and intrigue those who are not. Willem's flaws make him realistic without being unlikeable, and his relationships are masterfully described. It is a novel that is difficult to stop reading, and then, difficult to stop thinking about. Reviewer: Holly Storm, Teen Reviewer

School Library Journal

11/01/2013Gr 9 Up—This companion novel to Just One Day (Dutton, 2013) explores the other side of the ill-timed romance between an American high school graduate and a Dutch actor. In that book, good-girl Allyson sheds her identity and inhibitions to spend one romantic day in Paris with Willem, a traveling actor-and spends the next year hunting him down after he abandons her. Forman has finally answered frustrated readers' questions about why Willem left Allyson alone in an artists' squat and disappeared. This novel, written from his point of view, picks up from the moment when he wakes up in a Paris hospital after a severe beating to the moment Allyson walks in his door a year later. Forman mirrors the structure of the first book and uses the year of separation as a time of growth for Willem. He uses the aborted romance as a catalyst for reconnecting with family, close friends, and his love of the theater. Readers are asked to suspend disbelief quite a few times (Willem's temporary amnesia after his injury seems quite selective), but besotted readers will be more than willing to do so if it brings the lovers together again. The number of characters and backstories makes the story a little cluttered, but the writing is lively and the romantic narrative is compelling. Just One Year can be read as a stand-alone novel, but those readers would not catch the breadcrumbs Forman dropped in Just One Day. As much a travelogue as it is a romance, this novel will appeal to fans of the movie Before Sunrise or Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperCollins, 2005).—Susannah Goldstein, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City

Kirkus Reviews

2013-10-01Willem de Ruiter, a rootless young man, reconnects with his family and himself as he searches for the 18-year-old girl he deserted after a romantic night in Paris in this companion to Just One Day (2013). In the previous book,heroine Allyson finds her true self as she searches for Willem; here, Forman tells Willem's side of the story, chronicling his psychological growth during the year after their magical time together. For this slow-to-start story to work, readers must believe that Willem's night with Allyson had a profound emotional effect on him and that his feelings for her will be lasting, a hard sell considering his past. Additionally, his character will test readers' patience, as he wends and whines his way through the first half of the novel. However, the story picks up steam when Willem travels to India to see his emotionally remote mother and gets, if not precisely an aha moment, at least a new and more accurate understanding of her, an important step in his own emotional healing. He comes to realize that his avocation is acting and that commitment to the art itself is something worth fighting for. As he becomes engaged personally and professionally, readers will find their interest quickening, right up to the satisfying denouement. Billed as a romance but really a journey of self-exploration, this story initially confounds before paying off. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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Read an Excerpt

**This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.**

One

_________

AUGUST

Paris

_________

It’s the dream I always have: I’m on a plane, high above the clouds. The plane starts to descend, and I have this sudden panic because I just know that I’m on the wrong plane, am traveling to the wrong place. It’s never clear where I’m landing—in a war zone, in the midst of an epidemic, in the wrong century—only that it’s somewhere I shouldn’t be. Sometimes I try to ask the person next to me where we are going, but I can never quite see a face, can never quite hear an answer. I wake in a disoriented sweat to the sound of the landing gear dropping, to the echo of my heart beat­ing. It usually takes me a few moments to find my bearings, to locate where it is I am—an apartment in Prague, a hostel in Cairo—but even once that’s been established, the sense of being lost lingers.

I think I’m having the dream now. Just as always, I lift the shade to peer at the clouds. I feel the hydraulic lurch of the engines, the thrust downward, the pressure in my ears, the ignition of panic. I turn to the faceless person next to me—only this time I get the feeling it’s not a stranger. It’s someone I know. Someone I’m traveling with. And that fills me with such intense relief. We can’t both have gotten on the wrong plane.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask. I lean closer. I’m just about there, just about to see a face, just about to get an answer, just about to find out where it is I’m going—

And then I hear sirens.

I first noticed the sirens in Dubrovnik. I was traveling with a guy I’d met in Albania, when we heard a siren go by. It sounded like the kind they have in American action movies, and the guy I was traveling with commented on how each country had its own siren sound. “It’s helpful because if you forget where you are, you can always close your eyes, let the sirens tell you,” he told me. I’d been gone a year by then, and it had taken me a few minutes to summon the sound of the sirens at home. They were musical almost, a down-up-down-up la, la, la, la, like someone absentmindedly, but cheerfully, humming.

That’s not what this siren is. It is monotonous, a nyeah-nyeah, nyeah-nyeah, like the bleating of electric sheep. It doesn’t become louder or fainter as it comes closer or gets farther away; it’s just a wall of wailing. Much as I try, I can­not locate this siren, have no idea where I am.

I only know that I am not home.

I open my eyes. There is bright light everywhere, from over­head, but also from my own eyes: tiny pinprick explosions that hurt like hell. I close my eyes.

Kai. The guy I traveled with from Tirana to Dubrovnik was called Kai. We drank weak Croatian pilsner on the ram­parts of the city and then laughed as we pissed into the Adri­atic. His name was Kai. He was from Finland.

The sirens blare. I still don’t know where I am.

The sirens stop. I hear a door opening, I feel water on my skin. A shifting of my body. I sense it is better to keep my eyes closed. None of this is anything I want to witness.

But then my eyes are forced open, and there’s another light, harsh and painful, like the time I spent too long looking at a solar eclipse. Saba warned me not to, but some things are impossible to tear yourself away from. After, I had a head­ache for hours. Eclipse migraine. That’s what they called it on the news. Lots of people got them from staring at the sun. I know that, too. But I still don’t know where I am.

There are voices now, as if echoing out from a tunnel. I can hear them, but I cannot make out what they’re saying.

“Comment vous appelez-vous?” someone asks in a lan­guage I know is not mine but that I somehow understand. What is your name?

“Can you tell us your name?” The question again in an­other language, also not my own.

“Willem de Ruiter.” This time it’s my voice. My name.

“Good.” It is a man’s voice. It switches back to the other language. French. It says that I got my own name right, and I wonder how it is he knows this. For a second I think it is Bram speaking, but even as muddled as I am, I realize this is not possible. Bram never did learn French.

“Willem, we are going to sit you up now.”

The back of my bed—I think I’m on a bed—tilts forward. I try to open my eyes again. Everything is blurry, but I can make out bright lights overhead, scuffed walls, a metal table.

“Willem, you are in the hospital,” the man says.

Yes, I was just sussing that part out. It would also ex­plain my shirt being covered in blood, if not the shirt itself, which is not mine. It is gray and says SOS in red letter­ing. What does SOS mean? Whose shirt is this? And whose blood is on it?

I look around. I see the man—a doctor?—in the lab coat, the nurse next to him, holding out an ice compress for me to take. I touch my cheek. The skin is hot and swollen. My fin­ger comes away with more blood. That answers one question.

“You are in Paris,” the doctor says. “Do you know where Paris is?”

I am eating tagine at a Moroccan restaurant in Mon­torgueil with Yael and Bram. I am passing the hat after a performance with the German acrobats in Montmartre. I am thrashing, sweaty, at a Mollier Than Molly show at Divan du Monde with Céline. And I’m running, running through the Barbès market, a girl’s hand in mine.

I hear boots and taste blood. There is a pool of it in my mouth. I don’t know what to do with it, so I swallow.

“It appears you were in a fight,” the doctor continues. “You will need to make a report to the police. But first you will need sutures for your face, and we must take a scan of your head to make sure there is no subdural hematoma. Are you on holiday here?”

“They found your bag and its contents scattered at the scene. Your passport was still inside. So was your wallet.”

He hands it to me. I look at the billfold. There are more than a hundred euros inside, though I seem to recall having a lot more. My identity card is missing.

“We also found this.” He shows me a small black book. “There is still quite a bit of money in your wallet, no? It doesn’t suggest a robbery, unless you fought off your attack­ers.” He frowns, I assume at the apparent foolishness of this maneuver.

Did I do that? A low fog sits overhead, like the mist com­ing off the canals in the morning that I used to watch and will to burn off. I was always cold. Yael said it was because though I looked Dutch, her Mediterranean blood was swim­ming in me. I remember that, remember the scratchy wool blanket I would wrap myself in to stay warm. And though I now know where I am, I don’t know why I’m here. I’m not supposed to be in Paris. I’m supposed to be in Holland. Maybe that explains that niggling feeling.

Burn off. Burn off, I will the fog. But it is as stubborn as the Dutch fog. Or maybe my will is as weak as the winter sun. Either way, it doesn’t burn off.

“Do you know the date?” the doctor asks.

I try to think, but dates float by like leaves in a gutter. But this is nothing new. I know that I never know the date. I don’t need to. I shake my head.

“Do you know what month it is?”

Augustus. Août. No, English. “August.”

“Day of the week?”

Donderdag, something in my head says. Thursday. “Thursday?” I try.

“Friday,” the doctor corrects, and the gnawing feeling grows stronger. Perhaps I am supposed to be somewhere on Friday.

The intercom buzzes. The doctor picks it up, talks for a minute, hangs up, turns to me. “Radiology will be here in thirty minutes.” Then he begins talking to me about com­motions cérébrales or concussions and temporary short-term memory loss and cats and scans and none of it is making a lot of sense.

“Is there someone we can call?” he asks. And I feel like there is, but for the life of me, I can’t think who. Bram is gone and Saba is gone and Yael might as well be. Who else is there?

The nausea hits, fast, like a wave I had my back to. And then there’s puke all over my bloodied shirt. The nurse is quick with the basin, but not quick enough. She gives me a towel to clean myself with. The doctor is saying something about nausea and concussions. There are tears in my eyes. I never did learn to throw up without crying.

The nurse mops my face with another towel. “Oh, I missed a spot,” she says with a tender smile. “There, on your watch.”

On my wrist is a watch, bright and gold. It’s not mine. For the quickest moment, I see it on a girl’s wrist. I travel up the hand to a slender arm, a strong shoulder, a swan’s neck. When I get to the face, I expect it to be blank, like the faces in the dream. But it’s not.

Black hair. Pale skin. Warm eyes.

I look at the watch again. The crystal is cracked but it’s still ticking. It reads nine. I begin to suspect what it is I’ve forgotten.

I try to sit up. The world turns to soup.

The doctor pushes me back onto the bed, a hand on my shoulder. “You are agitated because you are confused. This is all temporary, but we will need to take the CT scan to make sure there is no bleeding on the brain. While we wait, we can attend to your facial lacerations. First I will give you some­thing to make the area numb.”

The nurse swabs off my cheek with something orange. “Do not worry. This won’t stain.”

It doesn’t stain; it just stings.

“I think I should go now,” I say when the sutures are done.

The doctor laughs. And for a second I see white skin covered in white dust, but warmer underneath. A white room. A throbbing in my cheek.

“Someone is waiting for me.” I don’t know who, but I know it’s true.

“Who is waiting for you?” the doctor asks.

“I don’t remember,” I admit.

“Mr. de Ruiter. You must have a CT scan. And, after, I would like to keep you for observation until your mental clarity returns. Until you know who it is who waits for you.”

Neck. Skin. Lips. Her fragile-strong hand over my heart. I touch my hand to my chest, over the green scrub shirt the nurse gave me after they cut off my bloody shirt to check for broken ribs. And the name, it’s almost right there.

Orderlies come to wheel me to a different floor. I’m load­ed into a metal tube that clatters around my head. Maybe it’s the noise, but inside the tube, the fog begins to burn off. But there is no sunshine behind it, only a dull, leaden sky as the fragments click together. “I need to go. Now!” I shout from the tube.

There’s silence. Then the click of the intercom. “Please hold still,” a disembodied voice orders in French.

I am wheeled back downstairs to wait. It is past twelve o’clock.

I wait more. I remember hospitals, remember exactly why I hate them.

I wait more. I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic. I take a coin out of my pocket and do the trick Saba taught me as a little boy. It works. I calm down, and when I do, more of the missing pieces slot into place. We came together to Paris. We are together in Paris. I feel her hand gentle on my side, as she rode on the back of the bicycle. I feel her not-so-gentle hand on my side, as we held each other tight. Last night. In a white room.

The white room. She is in the white room, waiting for me.

I look around. Hospital rooms are never white like people believe. They are beige, taupe, mauve: neutral tones meant to soothe heartbreak. What I wouldn’t give to be in an actual white room right now.

Later, the doctor comes back in. He is smiling. “Good news! There is no subdural bleeding. Only a concussion. How is your memory?”

“Better.”

“Good. We will wait for the police. They will take your statement and then I can release you to your friend. But you must take it very easy. I will give you an instruction sheet for care, but it is in French. Perhaps someone can translate it, or we can find you one in English or Dutch online.”

“Ce ne sera pas nécessaire,” I say.

“Ahh, you speak French?” he asks in French.

I nod. “It came back to me.”

“Good. Everything else will, too.”

“So I can go?”

“Someone must come for you! And you have to make a report to the police.”

Police. It will be hours. And I have nothing to tell them, really. I take the coin back out and play it across my knuckle. “No police!”

The doctor follows the coin as it flips across my hand. “Do you have problems with the police?” he asks.

“No. It’s not that. I have to find someone,” I say. The coin clatters to the floor.

The doctor picks it up and hands it to me. “Find who?”

Perhaps it’s the casual way he asked; my bruised brain doesn’t have time to scramble it before spitting it out. Or per­haps the fog is lifting now, and leaving a terrific headache behind. But there it is, a name, on my lips, like I say it all the time.

“Lulu.”

“Ahh, Lulu. Très bien!” The doctor claps his hands to­gether. “Let us call this Lulu. She can come get you. Or we can bring her to you.”

It is too much to explain that I don’t know where Lulu is. Only that she’s in the white room and she’s waiting for me and she’s been waiting for a long time. And I have this ter­rible feeling, and it’s not just because I’m in a hospital where things are routinely lost, but because of something else.

“I have to go,” I insist. “If I don’t go now, it could be too late.”

The doctor looks at the clock on the wall. “It is not yet two o’clock. Not late at all.”

“It might be too late for me.” Might be. As if whatever is going to happen hasn’t already happened.

The doctor looks at me for a long minute. Then he shakes his head. “It is better to wait. A few more hours, your mem­ory will return, and you will find her.”

“I don’t have a few hours!”

I wonder if he can keep me here against my will. I won­der if at this moment I even have a will. But something pulls me forward, through the mist and the pain. “I have to go,” I insist. “Now.”

The doctor looks at me and sighs. “D’accord.” He hands me a sheaf of papers, tells me I am to rest for the next two days, clean my wound every day, the sutures will dissolve. Then he hands me a small card. “This is the police inspector. I will tell him to expect your call tomorrow.”

I nod.

“You have somewhere to go?” he asks.

Céline’s club. I recite the address. The Métro stop. These I remember easily. These I can find.

“Okay,” the doctor says. “Go to the billing office to check out, and then you may go.”

“Thank you.”

He touches me on the shoulder, reminds me to take it easy. “I am sorry Paris brought you such misfortune.”

I turn to face him. He’s wearing a name tag and the blur­riness in my vision has subsided so I can focus on it. docteur robinet, it reads. And while my vision is okay, the day is still muddy, but I get this feeling about it. A hazy feeling of something—not quite happiness, but solidness, stepping on earth after being at sea for too long—fills me up. It tells me that whoever this Lulu is, something happened between us in Paris, something that was the opposite of misfortune.

Two

_________

At the billing office, I fill out a few thousand forms. There are problems when they ask for an address. I don’t have one. I haven’t for such a long time. But they won’t let me leave until I supply one. At first, I think to give them Marjolein, my fam­ily’s attorney. She’s who Yael has deal with all her important mail, and whom, I realize too late, I was supposed to meet with today—or was it tomorrow? Or yesterday now?—in Amsterdam. But if a hospital bill goes to Marjolein, then all of this goes straight back to Yael, and I don’t want to explain it to her. I don’t want to not explain it, either, in the more likely event she never asks about it.

“Can I give you a friend’s address?” I ask the clerk.

“I don’t care if you give me the Queen of England’s address so long as we have somewhere to mail the bill,” she says.

I can give them Broodje’s address in Utrecht. “One mo­ment,” I say.

“Take your time, mon chéri.”

I lean on the counter and rifle through my address book, flipping through the last year of accumulated acquaintances. There are countless names of people I don’t remember, names I didn’t remember even before I got this nasty bump on my head. There’s a message to Remember the caves in Matala. I do remember the caves, and the girl who wrote the message, but not why I’m supposed to remember them.

I find Robert-Jan’s address right at the front. I read it to the clerk, and as I close the book it falls open to one of the last pages. There’s all this unfamiliar writing, and at first I think my eyesight must really be messed up, but then I realize it’s just that the words are not English or Dutch but Chinese.

And for a second, I’m not here in this hospital, but I’m on a boat, with her, and she’s writing in my notebook. I remem­ber. She spoke Chinese. She showed it to me. I turn the page, and there’s this.

There’s no translation next to it, but I somehow know what that character means.

Double happiness.

I see the character here in the book. And I see it larger, on a sign. Double happiness. Is that where she is?

“Is there maybe a Chinese restaurant or store nearby?” I ask the clerk.

She scratches her hair with a pencil and consults a col­league. They start to argue about the best place to eat.

“No,” I explain. “Not to eat. I’m looking for this.” I show them the character in my book.

They look at each other and shrug.

“A Chinatown?” I ask.

“In the thirteenth arrondissement,” one replies.

“Where’s that?”

“Left Bank.”

“Would an ambulance have brought me here from there?” I ask.

“No, of course not,” she answers.

“There’s a smaller one in Belleville,” the other clerk offers.

“It is a few kilometers from here, not far,” the first clerk explains and tells me how to get to the Métro.

I put on my rucksack, and leave.

I don’t get far. My rucksack feels like it’s full of wet ce­ment. When I left Holland two years ago, I carried a big pack with many more things. But then it got stolen and I never replaced it, instead making do with a smaller bag. Over time, the rucksacks kept getting smaller and smaller, because there’s so little a person actually needs. These days, all I keep is a few changes of clothes, some books, some toiletries, but now even that feels like too much. When I go down the stairs into the Métro, the bag bounces with each step, and pain knifes deep into me.

“Bruised, not broken,” Dr. Robinet told me before I left. I thought he was talking about my spirit, but he’d been refer­ring to my ribs.

On the Métro platform, I pull everything out of the ruck­sack except for my passport, wallet, address book, and tooth­brush. When the train comes, I leave the rest on the platform. I’m lighter now, but it’s not any easier.

The Belleville Chinatown begins right after the Métro stop. I try to match the signs from her character in my book, but there are so many signs and the neon lettering looks noth­ing like those soft ink lines she wrote. I ask around for double happiness. I have no idea if I’m asking for a place, a person, a food, a state of mind. The Chinese people look frightened of me and no one answers, and I begin to wonder if maybe I’m not really speaking French, only imagining I do. Finally one of them, an old man with grizzled hands clutching an ornate cane, stares at me and then says, “You are a long way from double happiness.”

I am about to ask what he means, where it is, but then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window, my eye swelling purple, the bandage on my face seeping blood. I un­derstand he isn’t talking about a place.

But then I do glimpse familiar letters. Not the double happiness character, but the SOS letters from the mysterious T-shirt I was wearing earlier at the hospital. I see it now on another T-shirt, worn by a guy my age with jagged hair and an armful of metal cuffs. Maybe he’s connected to double happiness somehow.

It winds me to catch up with him, a half block away. When I tap him on the shoulder, he turns around and steps back. I point to his shirt. I’m about to ask him what it means when he asks me in French, “What happened to you?”

“Skinheads,” I reply in English. It’s the same word all over. I explain in French that I was wearing a T-shirt like his before.

I nod, though I remember now why they beat me up, and I’m pretty certain it had little to do with my T-shirt.

“Can you help me?” I ask.

“I think you need a doctor, my friend.”

I shake my head. That’s not what I need.

“What do you want?” the guy asks me.

“I’m looking for a place around here with a sign like this.”

“What is it?”

“Double happiness.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What is it you’re looking for?”

“Maybe a store. Restaurant. Club. I don’t know, really.”

“You don’t know shit, do you?”

“I know that I don’t know shit. That counts for some­thing.” I point to the egg on my head. “Things got scrambled.”

He peers at my head. “You should have that looked at.”

“I already did.” I point to the bandage covering the stitches on my cheek.

“Shouldn’t you be resting or something?”

“Later. After I find it. The double happiness.”

“What’s so important about this double happiness?”

I see her then, not just see her, but feel her, soft breath against my cheek as she whispered something to me just as I was falling asleep last night. I didn’t hear what she said. I only remember I was happy. To be in that white room. “Lulu,” I say.

“Oh. A girl. I’m on my way to see my girl.” He pulls out his phone and texts something. “But she can wait; they always do!” He grins at me, showing off a set of defiantly crooked teeth.

He’s right. They do. Even when I didn’t know they would, even when I’d been gone a long time, the girls, they waited. I never cared one way or another.

We take off, walking up and down the narrow blocks, the air thick with the smell of stewed organs. I feel like I’m run­ning to keep up with him, and the exertion sets my stomach churning again.

“You don’t look so pretty, friend,” he tells me right as I retch bile into the gutter. He looks vaguely alarmed. “Are you sure you don’t want a doctor?”

I shake my head, wipe my mouth, my eyes.

“Okay. I think maybe I should take you to meet my girl, Toshi. She works in this area, so she might know this double happiness place.”

I follow him a few blocks. I’m still trying to find the dou­ble happiness sign, but it’s even harder now because I got some sick on my address book and the ink’s smeared. Also, there are black spots dancing before my eyes making it hard to see where the pavement really is.

When we finally stop, I almost cry in relief. Because we’ve found it, the double happiness place. Everything is familiar. The steel door, the red scaffolding, the distorted portraits, even the faded name on the facade, Ganterie, after the glove factory it must have once been. This is the place.

Toshi comes to the door, a tiny black girl with tight dreadlocks, and I want to hug her for delivering me to the white room. I want to march straight to the white room and lie down next to Lulu, to have everything feel right again.

I try to say this, but I can’t. I can’t even really get my legs to move because the ground beneath me has turned liquid and wavy. Toshi and my samaritan, whose name is Pierre, are arguing in French. She wants to call the police and Pierre says they have to help me find double happiness.

It’s okay, I want to tell him. I’ve found it. This is the place. But I can’t quite make the words come out straight. “Lulu,” I manage to say. “Is she here?”

A few more people crowd around the door. “Lulu,” I say again. “I left Lulu here.”

“Here?” Pierre asks. He turns to Toshi and points to his head and then to my head.

I keep repeating her name: Lulu, Lulu. And then I stop but her name continues, like in an echo chamber, like my pleas are traveling deep into the building and will bring her back from wherever it is she’s gone.

When the crowd parts, I think it really has worked. That my words dredged her up, returned her to me. That the one time I wanted one to wait, one did.

A girl steps out from the crowd. “Oui, Lulu, c’est moi,” she says delicately.

But that’s not Lulu. Lulu was willowy with black hair and eyes as dark. This girl is a petite china doll, and blonde. She is not Lulu. Only then do I remember that Lulu is not Lulu either. Lulu was the name I gave her. I don’t know her real name.

The crowd stares at me. I hear myself babbling about needing to find Lulu. The other Lulu. I left her in the white room.

They look at me with odd expressions on their faces and then Toshi pulls out her mobile phone. I hear her talking; she is requesting an ambulance. It takes me a minute to realize it’s for me.

“No,” I tell her. “I already have been to the hospital.”

“I would hate to see you before,” Wrong Lulu says. “Were you in an accident?”

“He got beaten up by skinheads,” Pierre tells her.

But Wrong Lulu is right. Accident—how I found her. Accident—how I lost her. You have to give the universe cred­it, the way it evens things out like that.

Three

_________

I take a taxi to Céline’s club. The fare eats into the last of my money but it doesn’t matter. I just need enough to get back to Amsterdam, and I already have a train ticket. On the short ride over, I nod off in the backseat and it’s only when we pull up outside La Ruelle that I remember we left Lulu’s suitcase here.

The bar is dark and empty, but the door is unlocked. I hobble down to Céline’s office. It’s dark inside there, too, only the grayish glow of her computer monitor lighting her face. At first, when she looks up and sees me, she smiles that smile of hers, like a lion waking from a nap, refreshed but hungry. Then I click on the light.

“Mon dieu!” she exclaims. “What did she do to you?”

“Was she here? Lulu?”

Céline rolls her eyes. “Yes. Yesterday. With you.”

“Since then?”

“What happened to your face?”

“Where is the suitcase?”

“In the storage room, where we left it. What happened to you?”

“Give me the keys.”

Céline narrows her eyes with one of her looks, but she opens a desk drawer and tosses me the keys. I unlock the door, and there’s the suitcase. She hasn’t come back for it, and for a moment I feel happy because it means she must still be here. Still be in Paris, looking for me.

But then I think about what the woman from Ganterie said, the one who came downstairs after my vision went all black and Toshi threatened again to call an ambulance and I begged for a taxi instead. This woman said that she saw a girl race out of the doors when she unlocked them this morning. “I called after her to come back, but she just ran away,” she told me, in French.

Lulu didn’t speak French. And she didn’t know her way around Paris. She didn’t know how to get to the train station last night. She didn’t know how to get to the club, either. She wouldn’t know where her suitcase is. She wouldn’t know where I was—even if she wanted to find me.

I take the suitcase, search for a luggage tag, and find nothing: not a name tag or an airplane baggage claim. I try to open it, but it’s locked. I pause for all of a sec­ond before yanking off the flimsy padlock. As soon as I open the bag, I’m hit with the familiar. Not the contents—clothes and souvenirs I’ve never seen before—but the smell. I pick up a neatly folded T-shirt, put it to my face, and inhale.

“What are you doing?” Céline asks, suddenly appearing in the doorway.

I slam the door shut in her face and continue going through Lulu’s things. There are souvenirs, including one of those wind-up clocks like one we looked at together at one of the stalls on the Seine, some plug adapters, chargers, toilet­ries, but nothing that tracks back to her. There is a sheet of paper in a plastic bag, and I pick that up, hopeful, but it only contains an inventory of sorts.

Tucked underneath a sweater is a travel journal. I finger the cover. I was on a train to Warsaw more than a year ago when my rucksack got nicked. I had my passport, money, and address book on me, so all the thieves got was a half-broken backpack with a bunch of dirty clothes, an old camera, and a diary inside of it. They had probably just thrown everything away once they’d realized there was nothing to sell. Maybe they got twenty euros for the camera, though it was worth a lot more to me. As for the diary, worthless; I prayed they tossed it. I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone reading it. It was the only time in the last two years I’d considered going home. I didn’t. But when I bought new things, I didn’t replace the diary.

I wonder what Lulu would think of me reading her jour­nal. I try to imagine how I’d have felt had she read all my raw rantings about Bram and Yael from my stolen journal. When I do, it’s not the usual embarrassment or shame or the disgust that washes over me. Instead, it’s something quiet, familiar. Something like relief.

I open her journal, flipping through the pages, knowing I shouldn’t. But I’m looking for a way to contact to her, though maybe, I’m just looking for more of her. A different way to breathe her in.

But I find no scent of her. Not a single name or address: not hers, not anyone’s she met. There are only a few vague entries, nothing telling, nothing Lulu.

I flip to the end of the journal. The spine is stiff and cracks. Behind the back cover is a deck of postcards. I search them for addresses, but they’re blank.

I reach for a pen on one of the shelves and start writing my name, phone number, email address, and Broodje’s ad­dress for good measure, on each of the postcards. I write my­self into Rome, Vienna, Prague, Edinburgh. London. All the while, I’m wondering why. Keep in touch. It’s like a mantra on the road. This act you do. But it rarely happens. You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again. Mostly, you don’t.

The last postcard is of William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon. I’d told her to skip Hamlet and come see us instead. I’d told her the night was too nice for tragedy. I should have known better than to say a thing like that.

I flip Shakespeare over. “Please,” I begin. I’m about to write something else: Please get in touch. Please let me ex­plain. Please tell me who you are. But my cheek is throb­bing and my vision has gone all soft-focus again and I’m exhausted and weighted with regret. So I bookend the “please” with that regret. “I’m sorry,” I write.

I tuck all the postcards back in the bag and then back in the journal. I zip up the suitcase and put it back in the corner. I shut the door.

“As much a travelogue as it is a romance, this novel will appeal to fans of the movie Before Sunrise or Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperCollins, 2005).”—School Library Journal

“As [Willem] becomes engaged personally and professionally, readers will find their interest quickening, right up to the satisfying denouement.”—Kirkus Reviews

Meet the Author

Gayle Forman is an award-winning, internationally bestselling author and journalist. She is the author of Just One Day and Just One Year, and the companion e-novella Just One Night, as well as the New York Times bestsellers If I Stay and Where She Went. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I absolutely loved just one day and eagerly waited for what i thought was going to be a sequel to the cliffhanger i was left with in the last book but when i bought it i discovered that it is just Willems account of what he did in the year before Allyson showed up. After the intense ending of the last book, i was so excited to find out what happened next but this book extends no more than TEN WORDS beyond the ending of the last book. A complete waste of ten dollars not to mention of a potentially fantastic book!!!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I hope it is just as good as if i stay and just one night

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I loved this book from beginning to end. Beautifully written, with beautiful scenery and detail.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I enjoyed this book more than I enjoyed the first one only because it had more of Willem and less of Lulu. I liked the Shakespeare aspect going on.
I love how Just One Year paralleled with Just One Day and the incidents that happened in both their journeys which shaped them as characters.
ALSO, there were so many good sayings and quotes that I always had a pencil near me :)

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I loved this book! I am glad Gayle Forman lets us see William's side of the story!

Lisa-Jean

More than 1 year ago

Loved that we got both sides of the same story :-)

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

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More than 1 year ago

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More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Amazing book. Gayle Foreman is such a good writer

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Loved it made everything come into perspective a must read 100%

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I love the book. I read the first book. Want to know what happens next

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Loved the first book and was excited to find out how their story would end, but was a little disappointed that the story didn't continue on. This book was essentially Willems side of the story. Would love a third book that really does continue their story.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

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More than 1 year ago

rockygirl1

More than 1 year ago

Let me tell you about this amazing book that I just consumed (because reading would imply that I took my time and read it, consuming is picking it up and not coming up for air until the very end.)
This was probably my most anticipated book to come out this year. I had previously read Just One Day, and I loved it so much. I mean I can&rsquo;t begin to tell you how much I loved the first book. Reading this second one? Was just like putting the last pieces in the puzzle. Forman has proven once again why she is among my favorite authors. This book was just so amazing.
One of the great things about this book was all the details that were included and how Forman incorporated them into the story. I was amazed at how Shakespeare played into the story and all the elements that were tied in.
I also loved how parallel the stories are. You just know that Willem is right there sometimes, so close to finding his Lulu. I think that is part of what makes this story so amazing.
&lsquo;Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn&rsquo;t even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself. But if you keep waiting for the doors to be opened for you&hellip; I think you&rsquo;ll have a hard time finding single happiness,let alone that double portion.&rsquo;
The other thing about this book, is it wasn&rsquo;t a true all out love story. It was a story about a boy who needed to grow up. Who needed to accept some things in his live, and most of all, needed to find out who he was.
&lsquo;There&rsquo;s a difference between losing something you knew you had and losing something you discovered you had. One is a disappointment. The other feels like losing a piece of yourself.&rsquo;
So, in my final round up on this one, if you only read one book that I recommend this year, read this one. Of course, if you haven&rsquo;t read Just One Day, read that one first. And even if you read it before, read it again, cause you will be amazed at what you will forget!
Beautiful, wonderful, amazing. Yep, favorite book so far for 2013. No question.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

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More than 1 year ago

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More than 1 year ago

Andrea17

More than 1 year ago

It's not often that when I finish a book I need the sequel immediately. Normally I can be (relatively) patent enough to wait the year or so until the next release. This was both the case and not the case for the Just One Day series. I immediately needed to read Just One Year after Just One Day, but unfortunately for me, the paperback had not yet been released and wouldn't be for another six months. (My copy of Just One Day is paperback so I needed the same for Just One Year. It's a sickness - don't you judge me)
So I waited for my email to come that my preordered copy had been mailed and when it did, I was thrilled. When it came in the mail on release day, I couldn't have opened the package quick enough.
Just One Year begins with Willem in the hospital not really knowing what's going on. He'd just been attacked my the skinheads (something we learned in Just One Day) and knows he has to be somewhere, just not where. He has vague memories of the day before and of Lulu (aka Allyson) but by the time he remembers everything it's too late.
Willem lives the life of &quot;accidents&quot; that lead him on amazing adventures and introduces him to a rather interesting cast of characters. He meets a woman in Mexico who runs a theater camp out of New York, specializing in Shakespeare. He visits is mother in India and winds up playing the villain in a Bollywood movie.
I love learning more about Willem and watching him life is life for this year helps us understand who he is while giving us peeks into his past, family relationship, and friendships; we get a larger picture of this wanderer. I love that this novel is a romance, but at the same time it's not. It is so much more than that. Yes, Willem is searching for Allyson as he finds trouble getting over her, but it's also about him searching for and finding himself. His search for her is a bit tricker as he doesn't even know her first name and despite his almost giving up a few times, he realizes that he can't stop and most likely never will. Something in him kept looking for Allyson and through this search he finds himself and his double happiness.
Gayle did an amazing job of introducing us to these two characters and allowing us to spend a year with each of them after the events in Paris. I don't think I would have truly appreciated Allyson's story without Willem's or vise versa. I know that I definitely would not have appreciated Just One Night without Just One Year (but that's a review for next week).
I do wish I had read these two books closer in sequence, because while one scene was obvious that they were like 50 feet from one another, I have a feeling Gayle entered more little hints and nods to Just One Day that I missed since I hadn't read them closer together. I guess that's what rereads are for!